The Brothers Karamazov
used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he
explained afterwards, used it “to insult him.”
“What’s that?” The doctor flung up his head, staring with surprise at
Kolya. “Who’s this?” he addressed Alyosha, as though asking him to
explain.
“It’s Perezvon’s master, don’t worry about me,” Kolya said incisively
again.
“Perezvon?”[7] repeated the doctor, perplexed.
“He hears the bell, but where it is he cannot tell. Good-by, we shall
meet in Syracuse.”
“Who’s this? Who’s this?” The doctor flew into a terrible rage.
“He is a schoolboy, doctor, he is a mischievous boy; take no notice of
him,” said Alyosha, frowning and speaking quickly. “Kolya, hold your
tongue!” he cried to Krassotkin. “Take no notice of him, doctor,” he
repeated, rather impatiently.
“He wants a thrashing, a good thrashing!” The doctor stamped in a
perfect fury.
“And you know, apothecary, my Perezvon might bite!” said Kolya, turning
pale, with quivering voice and flashing eyes. “_Ici_, Perezvon!”
“Kolya, if you say another word, I’ll have nothing more to do with
you,” Alyosha cried peremptorily.
“There is only one man in the world who can command Nikolay
Krassotkin—this is the man”; Kolya pointed to Alyosha. “I obey him,
good-by!”
He stepped forward, opened the door, and quickly went into the inner
room. Perezvon flew after him. The doctor stood still for five seconds
in amazement, looking at Alyosha; then, with a curse, he went out
quickly to the carriage, repeating aloud, “This is ... this is ... I
don’t know what it is!” The captain darted forward to help him into the
carriage. Alyosha followed Kolya into the room. He was already by
Ilusha’s bedside. The sick boy was holding his hand and calling for his
father. A minute later the captain, too, came back.
“Father, father, come ... we ...” Ilusha faltered in violent
excitement, but apparently unable to go on, he flung his wasted arms
round his father and Kolya, uniting them in one embrace, and hugging
them as tightly as he could. The captain suddenly began to shake with
dumb sobs, and Kolya’s lips and chin twitched.
“Father, father! How sorry I am for you!” Ilusha moaned bitterly.
“Ilusha ... darling ... the doctor said ... you would be all right ...
we shall be happy ... the doctor ...” the captain began.
“Ah, father! I know what the new doctor said to you about me.... I
saw!” cried Ilusha, and again he hugged them both with all his
strength, hiding his face on his father’s shoulder.
“Father, don’t cry, and when I die get a good boy, another one ...
choose one of them all, a good one, call him Ilusha and love him
instead of me....”
“Hush, old man, you’ll get well,” Krassotkin cried suddenly, in a voice
that sounded angry.
“But don’t ever forget me, father,” Ilusha went on, “come to my grave
... and, father, bury me by our big stone, where we used to go for our
walk, and come to me there with Krassotkin in the evening ... and
Perezvon ... I shall expect you.... Father, father!”
His voice broke. They were all three silent, still embracing. Nina was
crying quietly in her chair, and at last seeing them all crying,
“mamma,” too, burst into tears.
“Ilusha! Ilusha!” she exclaimed.
Krassotkin suddenly released himself from Ilusha’s embrace.
“Good-by, old man, mother expects me back to dinner,” he said quickly.
“What a pity I did not tell her! She will be dreadfully anxious.... But
after dinner I’ll come back to you for the whole day, for the whole
evening, and I’ll tell you all sorts of things, all sorts of things.
And I’ll bring Perezvon, but now I will take him with me, because he
will begin to howl when I am away and bother you. Good-by!”
And he ran out into the passage. He didn’t want to cry, but in the
passage he burst into tears. Alyosha found him crying.
“Kolya, you must be sure to keep your word and come, or he will be
terribly disappointed,” Alyosha said emphatically.
“I will! Oh, how I curse myself for not having come before!” muttered
Kolya, crying, and no longer ashamed of it.
At that moment the captain flew out of the room, and at once closed the
door behind him. His face looked frenzied, his lips were trembling. He
stood before the two and flung up his arms.
“I don’t want a good boy! I don’t want another boy!” he muttered in a
wild whisper, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my
tongue—” He broke off with a sob and sank on his knees before the
wooden bench. Pressing his fists against his head, he began sobbing
with absurd whimpering cries, doing his utmost that his cries should
not be heard in the room.
Kolya ran out into the street.
“Good-by, Karamazov? Will you come yourself?” he cried sharply and
angrily to Alyosha.
“I will certainly come in the evening.”
“What was that he said about Jerusalem?... What did he mean by that?”
“It’s from the Bible. ‘If I forget thee, Jerusalem,’ that is, if I
forget all that is most precious to me, if I let anything take its
place, then may—”
“I understand, that’s enough! Mind you come! _Ici_, Perezvon!” he cried
with positive ferocity to the dog, and with rapid strides he went home.
Book XI. Ivan
Chapter I.
At Grushenka’s
Alyosha went towards the cathedral square to the widow Morozov’s house
to see Grushenka, who had sent Fenya to him early in the morning with
an urgent message begging him to come. Questioning Fenya, Alyosha
learned that her mistress had been particularly distressed since the
previous day. During the two months that had passed since Mitya’s
arrest, Alyosha had called frequently at the widow Morozov’s house,
both from his own inclination and to take messages for Mitya. Three
days after Mitya’s arrest, Grushenka was taken very ill and was ill for
nearly five weeks. For one whole week she was unconscious. She was very
much changed—thinner and a little sallow, though she had for the past
fortnight been well enough to go out. But to Alyosha her face was even
more attractive than before, and he liked to meet her eyes when he went
in to her. A look of firmness and intelligent purpose had developed in
her face. There were signs of a spiritual transformation in her, and a
steadfast, fine and humble determination that nothing could shake could
be discerned in her. There was a small vertical line between her brows
which gave her charming face a look of concentrated thought, almost
austere at the first glance. There was scarcely a trace of her former
frivolity.
It seemed strange to Alyosha, too, that in spite of the calamity that
had overtaken the poor girl, betrothed to a man who had been arrested
for a terrible crime, almost at the instant of their betrothal, in
spite of her illness and the almost inevitable sentence hanging over
Mitya, Grushenka had not yet lost her youthful cheerfulness. There was
a soft light in the once proud eyes, though at times they gleamed with
the old vindictive fire when she was visited by one disturbing thought
stronger than ever in her heart. The object of that uneasiness was the
same as ever—Katerina Ivanovna, of whom Grushenka had even raved when
she lay in delirium. Alyosha knew that she was fearfully jealous of
her. Yet Katerina Ivanovna had not once visited Mitya in his prison,
though she might have done it whenever she liked. All this made a
difficult problem for Alyosha, for he was the only person to whom
Grushenka opened her heart and from whom she was continually asking
advice. Sometimes he was unable to say anything.
Full of anxiety he entered her lodging. She was at home. She had
returned from seeing Mitya half an hour before, and from the rapid
movement with which she leapt up from her chair to meet him he saw that
she had been expecting him with great impatience. A pack of cards dealt
for a game of “fools” lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the
leather sofa on the other side and Maximov lay, half-reclining, on it.
He wore a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill
and weak, though he was smiling blissfully. When the homeless old man
returned with Grushenka from Mokroe two months before, he had simply
stayed on and was still staying with her. He arrived with her in rain
and sleet, sat down on the sofa, drenched and scared, and gazed mutely
at her with a timid, appealing smile. Grushenka, who was in terrible
grief and in the first stage of fever, almost forgot his existence in
all she had to do the first half-hour after her arrival. Suddenly she
chanced to look at him intently: he laughed a pitiful, helpless little
laugh. She called Fenya and told her to give him something to eat. All
that day he sat in the same place, almost without stirring. When it got
dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya asked her mistress:
“Is the gentleman going to stay the night, mistress?”
“Yes; make him a bed on the sofa,” answered Grushenka.
Questioning him more in detail, Grushenka learned from him that he had
literally nowhere to go, and that “Mr. Kalganov, my benefactor, told me
straight that he wouldn’t receive me again and gave me five roubles.”
“Well, God bless you, you’d better stay, then,” Grushenka decided in
her grief, smiling compassionately at him. Her smile wrung the old
man’s heart and his lips twitched with grateful tears. And so the
destitute wanderer had stayed with her ever since. He did not leave the
house even when she was ill. Fenya and her grandmother, the cook, did
not turn him out, but went on serving him meals and making up his bed
on the sofa. Grushenka had grown used to him, and coming back from
seeing Mitya (whom she had begun to visit in prison before she was
really well) she would sit down and begin talking to “Maximushka” about
trifling matters, to keep her from thinking of her sorrow. The old man
turned out to be a good story-teller on occasions, so that at last he
became necessary to her. Grushenka saw scarcely any one else beside
Alyosha, who did not come every day and never stayed long. Her old
merchant lay seriously ill at this time, “at his last gasp” as they
said in the town, and he did, in fact, die a week after Mitya’s trial.
Three weeks before his death, feeling the end approaching, he made his
sons, their wives and children, come upstairs to him at last and bade
them not leave him again. From that moment he gave strict orders to his
servants not to admit Grushenka and to tell her if she came, “The
master wishes you long life and happiness and tells you to forget him.”
But Grushenka sent almost every day to inquire after him.
“You’ve come at last!” she cried, flinging down the cards and joyfully
greeting Alyosha, “and Maximushka’s been scaring me that perhaps you
wouldn’t come. Ah, how I need you! Sit down to the table. What will you
have—coffee?”
“Yes, please,” said Alyosha, sitting down at the table. “I am very
hungry.”
“That’s right. Fenya, Fenya, coffee,” cried Grushenka. “It’s been made
a long time ready for you. And bring some little pies, and mind they
are hot. Do you know, we’ve had a storm over those pies to-day. I took
them to the prison for him, and would you believe it, he threw them
back to me: he would not eat them. He flung one of them on the floor
and stamped on it. So I said to him: ‘I shall leave them with the
warder; if you don’t eat them before evening, it will be that your
venomous spite is enough for you!’ With that I went away. We quarreled
again, would you believe it? Whenever I go we quarrel.”
Grushenka said all this in one breath in her agitation. Maximov,
feeling nervous, at once smiled and looked on the floor.
“What did you quarrel about this time?” asked Alyosha.
“I didn’t expect it in the least. Only fancy, he is jealous of the
Pole. ‘Why are you keeping him?’ he said. ‘So you’ve begun keeping
him.’ He is jealous, jealous of me all the time, jealous eating and